


The Chains that Bind

by Grandoverlord



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: (Obviously), Aftercare, Angst, BDSM, Bondage, Catharsis, Chains, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spanking, hairpulling, handjobs, hints of handkink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 15:41:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11992803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grandoverlord/pseuds/Grandoverlord
Summary: “But you’re not going to give me what I want,” Kurapika concludes. Leorio’s kept him like this in the past, teased him until he’s half-sobbing for it. An echo of disappointment ripples through him at the idea of that for tonight. But these things aren’t up to him.Low. “Who said anything about that?”Leorio’s hands are so big, so heavy, that the first blow is a revelation in what it means to collide.





	The Chains that Bind

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, an excuse to have my boy in chains.

 

Kurapika’s fingers are sure, though he is not. He holds the cellphone to his ear and waits for the dial tone to slip to voicemail. It’s the middle of the night. He should know better than this, but that would leave him with nothing, so he chooses to forget.

The harvest moon watches blearily as Kurapika’s breath catches.  

“Leorio.” Talking. Not voicemail; a conversation. “I can’t explain. I know. I will. Yes, I understand. Will you meet me here?” Kurapika gives the name for the hotel, the room number, and a word that matters more than either of those. It’s so quiet that the phone can barely pick it up. But however barely, it does, and the word is carried across the city to where Leorio leans against a railing. The word is echoed half a second later as the signal reaches Leorio’s phone. It is suspended in the silence between them as Leorio bites his lip and nods, then remembers that Kurapika cannot see him and affirms that he’s on his way.

Kurapika says the word again to himself, and hears everything he cannot say in it.

_“Pl_ _ease.”_

Kurapika hangs up. Sits down. The chair is cheap, hard, but he doesn’t notice. If he did, he would be glad for it.

The sound of rattling chains is loud in the hotel room, and Kurapika wonders if the sound will follow him forever. He looks down and realizes that the sound more than apparition, that his hands are shaking. He lets them. It’s only right that he carry physical mark of what he’s done, same as them; they have their tattoos, he has his hands.

He wants to hide in those hands and forget that the city is alive; he cannot abide that there are people laughing and living and falling in love just outside. The dissonance is enough to make his head throb.

Yes, the moon is the only thing that’s right about this bitter world, and its lingering gaze is enough to send lances through Kurapika’s chest.

It is a harvest moon tonight, and Uvogin is dead. It is a harvest moon tonight and Kurapika is the reaper. It is a harvest moon tonight and Kurapika is stained red by its light. He stills his hands, but his whole body is shaking now, the shadows and light branding memory to his skin.

He should probably wash off the blood before Leorio gets here.

So he washes his hands. He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror until it’s time to take out his contacts, and by then his eyes are blue again.

A shaky breath. The moon can’t see him any more, but he has to act as if it can. As if someone can, because he will hold himself together for as long as there are eyes on him. It’s only once he realizes that he’s alone that he’ll wither.

Kurapika goes back to the chair and folds, wrinkling like a shirt left too long on the floor. He braces his elbows on his knees and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. There’s exhaustion in them now, along with everything else. Along with rage. Along with regret. Along with images that won’t stop playing, gouging into his mind over and over again--just like _they_ gouged the day they took everything, when they reached in before his family were even dead and Kurapika could hear them screaming from the rafters, when they ripped and left them half-alive, blood pooling in the place of a brighter red, spilling to the ground to the sound of rough laughter--

He can feel himself cracking. He needs to break. But he needs it to be clean, and there’s only one person he trusts to absolutely _shatter_ him.

There’s a knock at the door.

It’s unlocked, and he’s not left waiting for long.

When Leorio crosses the threshold, it’s with a brisk step and a brusque hunch to his shoulders. That step halts just inside the door, and those shoulders drop to a state of unguarded ‘oh’ as Kurapika meets his eyes.

He can’t help it; they’re red again, and it’s all Kurapika can do to focus on Leorio. He anchors his gaze on Leorio. He drops to his knees.   

Leorio won’t understand, he thinks for a moment. They’ve done this before, but never like this. When they come together, it’s always planned, always soft, even when their actions are decidedly not _._ He has no room for softness left to grow. He is hard crystal, jutting out from the heat and pressure of somewhere deep in the earth.

Leorio tips his head to the side and Kurapika tips his head to the sky, baring a long column of neck as if to say ‘look at all this life in me’-- as if to offer it. A nod. The rush of relief is the kindest fire that Kurapika has ever felt.

Leorio shrugs off his jacket and loosens his tie. His fingers are still caught in the knot as he approaches Kurapika.

“Are you sure you want this?” Leorio asks, fingers lilting along Kurapika’s jaw, and it’s good that he does. Kurapika recognizes that, at least.

What Kurapika wants is to be free. He wants to feel beyond himself, more than the sum of his sins. Under Leorio’s hand, he becomes a creature unbound. Now his chin tilts up, back straight, and the floor is hard under his knees. His hands shake. “I’m sure,” Kurapika says.

Hesitation. Fluttering heartbeat. Lead in his throat.

“Leorio,” Kurapika breathes. “ _I need this_.”

That’s all it takes. A few words and Leorio’s doubt is cast away because he knows that whatever may come between them, whether it be reticence or distance or unbearable hurt, that precious space will never house lies. So Leorio straightens his spine and Kurapika finds himself forced to do the same, bidden by heavy, watchful eyes. The moon on one side, sharp and bright as a wound, Leorio on the other, dark and firm as the Earth.

Leorio rolls his shoulders back as he surveys the room. An expansion. His presence fills it, and it’s only partly metaphorical, Kurapika realizes. Whether he knows it or not, Leorio’s nen flares wide to stake claim.

There’s no plan. No predicting what’s going to happen tonight, and Kurapika’s body bows at the idea of it. It’s another surrender.

Back straight, eyes forward, mouth infinitesimally open. Invitation, Kurapika hopes; pointless, he knows. Leorio takes his time.

It starts as gentle touches, kinder than Kurapika deserves but he still leans into them. The touches stop. Kurapika stills, and the touches start again, a wandering hand along his jaw, the brush of knuckles over cheekbones and the pad of fingers on his lips. Kurapika relaxes with the expectation that those fingers will push their way inside, but Leorio is not an invader to his body; he is a supplicant. Those hands are in his hair again.

Kurapika lets out a quiet hiss at how good it feels, and Leorio’s hand tightens. Kurapika hisses again, because it’s the firm hand that he wants.

It appears that Leorio can tell, too, because the hand doesn’t leave his hair. Leorio is standing behind him now, so Kurapika cannot see him-- though he can sense him, of course, feel the waves of quiet power rolling off of him in a way that makes Kurapika shiver-- and his hand is heavy on Kurapika’s head. Sometimes it lays there in claim, sometimes carding gently through the sweat and blood. Sometimes it tugs.

And yes, there’s more of that now. Kurapika clenches his jaw as Leorio bunches his fist as _jerks_ , and Kurapika lets himself be carried back with it. This pain is dull and warm.

His scalp buzzes as Leorio goes back to almost absent-minded petting. Kurapika wonders how long he would be content like this. A long while. Longer than is probably good, or healthy, or any of those words that have stopped mattering.

The pull on his hair is sharper now, and he holds out against it for a moment before giving in to the call to stand. The heat of Leorio’s body presses behind. Kurapika can feel himself swaying.

A a quiet kiss to his neck, arms coming up to wrap around Kurapika’s body. His breath catches. The pressure is so light, but these arms feel like home.

And these are thoughts he cannot have.

Kurapika pushes them away just as those arms disappear and Leorio slips around to the front. The pulse in Kurapika’s throat jumps as he comes face to face with a man he’s been avoiding for months, and he hopes that the man sees it. His body says things that he cannot, not tonight.

If there is a word, there will be a storm of them; he cannot shed a drop of rain without summoning a typhoon.

A moment falls between them, where they are just standing, breathing in the night and each other’s smells, so familiar but so long in coming. Kurapika feels guilt flare.

The guilt strings through him as Leorio closes the distance, places his lips on Kurapika’s, saying the ‘hello’ that Kurapika hasn’t allowed him.  And then the kiss sheds all pretense of romance and turns to what Leorio knows he’s here for. Possession. Leorio’s lips rewrite him.

Kurapika presses into the kiss with a whine, sighing as Leorio’s teeth take in his lower lip. The taste of blood fills his mouth.  The pain’s just enough to keep him centered as Leorio’s hands run up Kurapika’s sides.

Clothes to the floor. Stumbling backwards, knees hit the bed. Kurapika allows himself to fall back. He lies there while Leorio unbuttons his own shirt, removes his shoes. Leorio just tosses the clothes wherever. He is the chaos in a carefully controlled world.

Kurapika watches, naked on the bed, as Leorio stands beside it. Leorio’s eyes rake over Kurapika, from his disheveled hair to the blisters on his hands to the flush of his cock, and his inscrutable eyes take on a harder tone. Wolfish.

“Well,” Leorio says.

Kuraika doesn’t move. He feels caught in those eyes, trapped by the heat of his gaze. It is nothing like the moon, and for that he is perennially grateful.

“What are we doing with you tonight?” Leorio muses. He towers over the bed, taller now that Kurapika is allowed to feel small. “We’ve got time.”

Leorio’s fingers ghost down to Kurapika’s chest. “We could spend part of it here,” he ghosts over Kurapika’s left nipple. “Could spend a lot of time here, actually, watching you blush like this. Or could fall a little lower.”

His hand trails over his ribs and spreads on Kurapika’s stomach. The muscle is firm beneath Leorio’s hand, and Kurapika knows that he’s probably the stronger of the two. But the spanse of Leorio’s hand, almost wide enough to take up his whole stomach, makes that power meaningless. Kurapika arches into the touch, and Leorio obliges him, keeps his hand there, weighing Kurapika down at his core.

Leorio’s other hand trails lower.

Kurapika’s breath stutters as he feels Leorio’s left hand wrap about his cock. He can’t remember the last time anyone touched him without the intent to cause pain. He’s fought so hard these last few months; to be strong, to be grounded, to be alone, and this touch is a bittersweet denial of all of it.

The moon is watching; it knows that Kurapika is a traitor. But the moon doesn’t matter when Leorio’s hand starts moving, when he forgets for a moment the feeling of Uvogin’s heart collapsing under his chains.

Speeding up now, breath coming shorter. A smile, small and real, on Leorio’s face, though Kurapika’s got his eyes wedged shut. The slide of silk and Kurapika’s got a tie over his eyes. Leorio doesn’t ask questions. He just _understands._

No more eyes.

The sound of shifting fabric and Leorio’s straddling him. The hand doesn’t stop, and Kurapika can feel something like release building in his gut, but it isn’t right yet, he doesn’t want it, doesn’t _deserve it--_

Leorio turns him over with ease. It makes Kurapika feel light, easily handled. With the heaviness of his muscles, it’s a reprieve. Leorio’s hands are on his waist now. Kurapika wonders if he’s going to fuck him.

“All fours,” comes Leorio’s voice.

Kurapika can listen. He slides his legs out from under Leorio’s and gets on his hands and knees.

Another heavy hand, this time right between his shoulder blades, pushes his head down. He turns a cheek to the mattress and listens to the sound of breathing above him. He’s a sight to see like this, that’s what Leorio always says. Face down, ass up, body bowed with vulpine grace. In the darkness of the blindfold it’s hard to tell what’s going on, but then, that’s the point.

The hand that holds him down still rests on the nape of his neck, its pressure rendering the position just short of comfortable. Kurapika’s erection’s exposed to the air now, and he does something he doesn’t think he’s ever done in front of anyone before.

He turns on his zetsu.

“Kurapika,” Leorio breathes, wonder in his voice.

He’s defenseless now, completely, naked in the snow. Exposed.

“You’re so trusting today,” Leorio wonders. “Giving it all up, finally?” His other hand wanders over Kurapika’s ass, drifting at first. “It’s amazing to think that you’ve reached this point. You think I don’t know what you want, so you think you have to spell it out for me.” He kneads the flesh of Kurapika’s ass under his hand, working the sore muscles over while totally ignoring the way that Kurapika’s cock jumps in expectation.

Kurapika can imagine the way that Leorio looks right now; his cock strains against his pants and his eyes rove, taking in every inch of flesh that Kurapika could ever expose. Kurapika wants to give him more but he doesn’t know how.

Leorio’s voice by his ear. “But I know _exactly_ what you want.” The hand presses down harder. “You want to be held down. You want to be taken. You want to be tied up and wanted and fucked so hard that you can barely breathe.”

Kurapika nods under Leorio’s hand and suddenly the pressure’s gone.  

“Well, if that’s all you want, I’m sure you can find somebody to do that for you.”

Fire rushes to his face, but he knows what Leorio wants to hear. “I don’t want just _some_ body,” he mutters. He keeps his face against the bed, obedient to the unspoken expectation.

“I just like to hear you say it. I’m the only one who does this to you.”

“But you’re not going to give me what I want,” Kurapika concludes. Leorio’s kept him like this in the past, teased him until he’s half-sobbing for it. An echo of disappointment ripples through him at the idea of that for tonight. But these things aren’t up to him.  

Low. “Who said anything about that?”

Leorio’s hands are so big, so heavy, that the first blow is a revelation in what it means to collide.

Not meant to break but to bruise, _yes,_ Kurapika thinks, though it comes out as nothing more than a low grown.

“How’s that for giving it to you?”

Kurapika draws a shuddering breath but it’s cut off by the second blow, this time on the other cheek. He forces his muscles to relax, takes in the dull pain of it with something bordering perversely on satisfaction.

He lets out a low whine, clenching his hands against the sheets. The pain is good, it’s real, but he needs more. He needs to feel powerless, like he doesn’t matter at all, like nothing exists but sensation and the attention that Leorio so selflessly pays.

His hands flex again and Leorio’s hand closes over one. Drags it beyond Kurapika’s head, and Kurapika brings up the other of his own accord. Stretched out over him, Leorio’s heat is dark and _good_ , pinning Kurapika to the mattress.

He can’t move. It sends a note of panic racing down his throat, but his heart catches it and cradles it, adores it.  
“Leorio,” Kuapika mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“I want--” his throat is dry. “Can I ask you for something?”

Leorio’s voice is serious. “Do you need me to stop?”

Kurapika shakes his head quickly. “No, not at all-- I just--”

“You want more,” Leorio purrs. “I should’ve known.” Kurapika’s chains rattle as Leorio mouths at his neck. “Tell me what you need.”

An idea occurs then, and it’s wrong, but so is all of this. He manifests his chains. “Could you-- that is, I want--” he sets his jaw and clenches his fist, the ones with the chains. “Will you bind me?”

Leorio hesitates for a moment and Kurapika wonders what he sees, what he’s thinking. Leorio’s easy to read, but Kurapika can’t see his face. The tension tangling his gut isn’t the good kind.

Gently, Leorio takes Kurapika’s hand and draws out the cross attached to his thumb. It’s the first time Leorio’s even seen them, he realizes. And of course, he picks the one made for healing.

Leorio ties his wrists, like that’s enough.

Kurapika needs to be _caged._ He needs the restriction, the tension-- if Leorio won’t give it to him, Kurapika’s more than capable of making his own jail.

The chains leap back it’s Kurapika wrapping those chains around and around himself, conjuring link upon link until he can barely breathe. Despite all the pressure, he doesn’t feel safe. He doesn’t feel safe or warm or secure at all. The moon still hits his back; chains are his only protection, and they are full of holes.

Why isn’t it enough? They’re too tight, digging into his skin, but they feel wrong. He doesn’t know whether he wants to take them back or pull them tighter. Leorio makes the choice for him.

“That’s not the way to do it,” Leorio chides. “Let me do it right.”

He unwraps the chains from around Kurapika’s chest so that air can rattle its way into his lungs again. When Leorio wraps them again, it is careful. It is methodical. Kurapika’s wrists and ankles are bound.

“Better?” Leorio asks, trailing a knuckle down Kurapika’s spine, all the way to his tailbone.

Kurapika nods. His ass still smarts from Leorio’s hand, and now he’s got both of them, rubbing over their work. He remembers his cock. He pushes his face down into the mattress. He pushes his ass up into the air.

“If you insist,” Leorio says. Kurapika can hear the grin in it.

Kurapika keeps count.

“One,” and it hurts, but somehow better now. “Two. Three,” and the blow comes heavier than the ones before it, rocking Kurapika forward, tilting him off his axis. He’s not ready for the next one when it follows just behind, but he counts it anyway, “four” slipping off his lips in a gasp.

“Five, si-ix, seven, eight.” They fall faster now, raining down, and Kurapika loses himself to the inevitability of the next one. This is not something to be endured; it is something to be experienced, and he lets himself sway with every hit, knowing that Leorio will not let him fall.

Bruises. Whispers. Gratitude.

Every blow brings him further away from himself. He drops from the mind to the body, from the body to something more basic-- soul, Kurapika would say, but never out loud. He goes somewhere within himself in times like this, to some peaceful ocean so profound that he has never found the surface.They’re still coming down. Kurapika still counts.

“Nineteen.”

Leorio slows down. When he hits, it’s hard, an impact that ripples through Kurapika and leaves him shaking. Leaves him breathless. Leaves him begging-- for more, though, his words coming out slurred, drifting out as weightless as Kurapika feels. He’s not making sense, but it doesn’t matter.

“Twenty three-- god, yes I can’t please twenty _four_ \--”

He’s wracked with it, the pain and the punishment some sort of universal right for all the wrong he has done.

“Twenty nine Leorio I’ve missed--ah, thirty--” his head swims, buzzing beautifully and he knows that this is everything he’s been missing, everything he needs, and it’s not just the pain. It’s Leorio’s careful eyes and steady hands. It’s the phonecall picked up in the middle of the night, dropping everything to come after a lifetime of Kurapika unable to do the same.

Not unable; refusing.

This pain is healing, somehow. It’s not the danger of throwing himself into a fight and not caring if he comes out alive, but it’s the same sense of _deserving,_ of craving retribution. This is not just pain; it is penance.

Dully, he realizes he’s crying. Each sob wrenches through him like lightning and he can feel the hesitation in Leorio before he brings the next blow. This is the rain that washes away the blood, he thinks, the storm that he is always chasing.

When Leorio’s hand reaches around to grasp Kurapika’s erection, it’s more than enough.

Kurapika spills underneath Leorio’s hand and shudders, the last of his rage falling away to the aftershocks. He feels so perfectly small that he could bury himself in the blankets and never return.

Leorio, however, doesn’t give him that choice.

“Let’s get you into the shower,” he says, and props Kurapika up despite his objections. Kurapikia’s words are mumbled anyway, lost under the hiccups of sobs still racking through him.

He can’t remember the last time he cried.

The shower relaxes his muscles and takes the worst of the burn. It’s nice. Kurapika washes Leorio’s hair. Leorio talks through it, telling him about Gon and Killua and all the things that matter and some that don’t, filling the air with the comfort of easy words. Kurapika gives a few of his own, but he’s so tired he can barely stand on his feet.

When they’re back in the room, Kurapika watches the sun rise through the window, erasing the moon in quiet streaks of light.

They go to bed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Leorio asks Kurapika burrows into his chest, shakes his head.

“Tomorrow,” Kurapika tells him. “Not right now.”

Leorio nods and weaves his hands through Kurapika’s hair. “Well, I’ll be here.”

“You always are.” A pause. A sigh. A smile. “Thank you.”   

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this, and thanks for reading! If you liked it, I always super appreciate reviews-- tell me what you thought, yell about how beautiful Kurapika/ Leorio are, send me the entire script of the bee movie, idk. I like hearing from you. 
> 
> SHRUGS AND RUNS AWAY


End file.
